Inamorata
by Abe Lincoln Lover
Summary: Valentine's Day: Aoko has a new favorite word. But what does it mean...?


**AN: My Valentine's Day fic... for that one person who I hold dearest...**

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**Inamorata**

_in·am·o·ra·ta_

_noun_

_a woman who loves or is loved; female sweetheart or lover._

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A girl named Aoko sat in class, bored out of her wits.

She stole a glance at the clock for about the thirtieth time in the past five minutes. Time was going by too slow. The morbid side of her commented that that was a good thing and that she really shouldn't want the time to go any quicker, but she was young and didn't care. She just wanted class to be over. And really, what did she care that each second that ticked away was just one less that she would have left? She never really was a cogitative person, anyway.

Her doodled-over paper stared up at her, bug-eyed characters beaming up at her despite her foul mood. She thought she saw Kaito sneak a glance over at her paper, most likely because he wasn't paying attention either, but she was tired and annoyed so she could have just imagined it. She didn't really know why she would ever imagine something like that but she had heard of odder visions. More specifically, the time when her father had come home drunk, thought she was a pretty lady, and tried to make a move on her. Despite being able to fight him off, she was still pretty much scarred for life (not that she nor he had ever spoken of the incident since then... she suspected he had been too drunk to remember what had happened and didn't feel like bringing up an awkward topic if she didn't have to). Ahem. But still. More awkward, more inane visions had occurred.

She played with her hair a bit as she added a body to that head there, and a pair of glasses to this person here. She had the crazy idea to name them, so she wrote 毛利 蘭 under the girl and 工藤 新 under the little boy. The names sounded extremely familiar even though she couldn't place where she had heard them. And then, just for the hell of it, she drew a big fat son of a bitch heart around them. Her pencil broke before she could finish. Looking back, maybe she had been pressing down a little _too hard..._

But, god damn it all, she hated Valentine's Day.

It wasn't so much that she didn't have a boyfriend. No, she was perfectly fine with that. It was more that everyone else _did_. She was basically the only person in the whole room that wasn't in a relationship. Hell, even Kaito was going out with Akako (well, that was just what the rumors said, but it was true, right?). Hakuba was off in England like usual, but he spent so much time there that she wouldn't be surprised if he had a girlfriend over there. And she probably had some cute English name like "Daisy" or something. Scratch that. "Daisy" didn't exactly seem like a cute girl name, much less the name of a girl that Hakuba would date. Knowing him, he would probably only go out with a girl if her name was "Irene" (she had heard him speaking about a "Herlock Sholmes" or whatever book with Kuroba Kaito and had mentioned a character named "Irene Adler" or something similar). But she knew one thing, though... the girl's name sure wasn't "Nakamori Aoko".

Nakamori Aoko was _nobody's _valentine. She sniffed quietly and disdainfully, trying to prove to herself that she was better than all the rest of them. She didn't need a guy to make her happy. She didn't need to go along with the crowd and hang out with some _boy _on Valentine's Day. No sir, she didn't need that. Besides, she had better things to do on a Friday night than go out to some restaurant where she probably wouldn't even like the food! A list of things that she could do instead ran through her mind. She could... she could ride a bike, or watch a movie, or talk to her dad, or _something. _Anything. Because she was Nakamori Aoko and she didn't need a boy to make her happy.

She caught sight of Kaito's arm, his fingers rapidly tapping the desktop almost melodically in a fit of boredom. Her heart sunk as she thought about the topic more and more. Okay, maybe she did need one.

But she wouldn't let that keep her down! She could go home and call up Keiko and together they could -

Wait. Oh, yeah. Keiko had a date with some guy named Wakazuki Yuuto. So there went that plan. She kicked the toilet as she watched her arrangements get flushed down the drain. And god, did she hate those stupid crazy comparison analogy thingies she would sometimes come up with. Her grasp around her pencil tightened so much that it snapped in half. Just as she noticed what happened - shocked at her strength and rather impressed, actually - Kaito's piercing blue eyes (_which are so easy to get lost in, _a lovesick Aoko noted as she practically kicked herself for being such an aho) stared down in a puzzled fashion at her clenched fist. "Aoko? Are you... okay?"

"Absolutely terrific," she gritted out, smiling all broken glass at him. She was sure that he noticed the pissed off look in her eyes, but then again, she was never a magician to start with. She never learned the art or secret or whatever the hell it was called of Poker Face. And she sure as hell didn't care to learn it. If she was feeling something, then god damn it, she was going to let someone know. Not on purpose - never on purpose - but if the person was just smart enough to see through a lie as clear as that, then they deserved to know. Her cheeks felt tight for being forced to break into such a wide grin and for some reason she had the feeling that she was lying to herself. And not just about that.

"Oh, okay..." He seemed sort of nervous. And so much unlike her, he usually kept his emotions in check or hidden. So whatever anxiety he was showing, _he wanted her to see_. So that was fake nervousness, wasn't it. He was getting easier to read, ironically, the more he used that Poker Face.

But it wasn't like she cared. Nope, no sir. Not at all, no sir.

So she grinded her teeth together and turned back to her notes/doodles, and tried to ignore the silent laughter coming from him. Because, scratch whatever the hell she said earlier, the thing she hated the most about Valentine's Day was getting laughed at for not having a date.

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"Aoko! Wait up! Why are you walking so fast?" He was panting and running trying to keep up with her. All an act, she knew. It was to make her feel better. To make her think that she was really getting the better of him by walking so fast that he couldn't keep up with her. Such a blatant act. An act so good, in fact, that its own ingenuity gave it away. Because Aoko knew one thing for sure - Kaito had great stamina and could probably run a marathon without even breaking a sweat. Because if he was really running to keep up with her, he wouldn't have been panting. She hated when he did things like that, just to try to make her feel better.

She supposed that she could have felt flattered that he went out of his way to do things like that for her. But she didn't.

"Bakaito!" Irritation in her voice, very very obvious and very much on purpose. "If you can't keep up, then walk faster!"

"What are you angry about?" His hand reached out and made its way to her shoulder. How...? She turned to face him, stopping completely in her tracks. "What are you doing?"

He huffed and took his hand back. Not that she missed it. "I'm your friend," and his hands got shoved into his pockets, "and I just want to know what's up. You've been acting really strange all day. What's got you down, huh?" A questioning gaze that somehow let on that he was just as clueless as she appeared. A small smile cracked onto her face, and she chuckled a bit to herself. The master magician - the expert at poker faces - the genius was unable to tell what was up with her. It amazed her, sometimes, just how thick he could really be sometimes.

"It's nothing," she said anyway. She had no intentions of letting him in on her feelings, that jerk. Besides, this was... personal. She liked him. She had freaking _crush_ on him. He'd tease her forever. So no. She wasn't going to tell him. And - and he could figure it out, if he really wanted to. She wasn't that good at hiding things like that. So he was either extremely thick-headed or he just didn't want to believe it. The first option seemed more realistic, but for some reason she felt like she favored the second one more...

His eyes narrowed at her. He wasn't buying it. "Aoko," he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, almost like he was trying to work up the nerve to tell... or ask her something. "Can you stop? It's stupid to pretend that you're okay if you're not. Come on - I'm your best friend. Just tell me. If it's a secret, I'll keep it safe, okay?" And she looked up - so far up - into his dreamy blue eyes, eyes that were full of caring and concern, and definitely not of the perverted, mischievous asshole he had been during class. And she saw just how worried he was about her, and how confused he was. But she also saw the truth, which was that she couldn't tell him.

"I'm," she forced herself to grin, "perfectly fine. Don't worry about me."

She started to walk away, walk towards her house and just get home and forget about the day. "Inamorata," he whispered, just loudly enough that she heard it but quietly enough that she wasn't sure if she heard it correctly. She whirled around, doing an about-face. "What did you just say?"

"I said, 'inamorata'. You should look it up."

Hands in his pocket, breeze in his face, stoic expression painted all around. He reminded her of a statue, but then he began moving again. Deliberately. Nothing like how he usually did. His head down, the image of seriousness, he strolled by her slowly. She stood, watching as he walked down the sidewalk and turned to the left, disappearing among the brambles and bushes of the corner house's yard. She found herself stock-still.

"_Inamorata,_" she murmured.

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The moment she went home, she pressed her back against the door and breathed out a sigh of relief. She was so close to revealing everything to Kaito. And god, how he would have laughed. Tears threatened to fall, but she didn't know why. She ended up blaming it on the crappy Valentine's Day she was having.

She suddenly remembered the word that Kaito had said to her. "Inamorata". What the hell did that even mean? He had called her that, so it was either an insult or... or what? A compliment? Nah, Kaito wasn't that type of guy. All he did everyday was make fun of her. It was probably some fancy-ass way to say "stupid". Oh, that bastard. She was really going to give it to him tomorrow morning. Forget the mop, she had her fists. And her legs. Sure, she had never taken actual martial arts classes before, but she definitely pack a punch. She slightly winced at the memory of knocking a kid's three teeth straight out when she was in second grade. A week of suspension, that had been rough. Her father had reamed her out thoroughly and she had never done anything like that again. Well, she had never been caught again, at the very least.

It was a Friday, so she didn't have any homework to do. Her father had reminded her in the morning that he would be coming home late, as well. So technically she could just sit there and mope all night. It was her grumbling stomach that made her get up and actually do something productive. After dinner, she steered clear of the computers because as soon as she logged on she would automatically be obligated to look up the word. Inamorata. It stuck in her head like a virus. But she just _did not want to know _so she avoided the computer at all cost. The TV, she then found, was fairly good at taking her attention away from the curious case.

Maybe she could forget about the whole incident until Monday. Maybe.

It was a couple hours later when she finally heard the keys jingling in the lock. She deduced that she had fallen asleep watching the screen and looked around for a clock. The one beneath the television read 1:57. Late. She noted that it was very dark outside and that she should probably yell at her dad for coming home so late. Because working overtime was no excuse, not at _this _time at night. She clicked off the TV just as the door opened, just so that she wouldn't seem like such a big hypocrite. Her mouth was opened wide in a yawn when she heard a voice which was most _definitely_ not her father's.

"Get the girl."

Shit. Her heart was racing like mad and her eyes were bulging wide. Suddenly she wasn't all that tired anymore. She scrambled up from the couch she had been laying on and searched the room desperately for a place to hide. That voice... it scared her. She felt like she had heard it before, which was definitely creepy because this guy and whoever he had brought with him were looking for _her _and probably wanted to kill her or something. Her eyes trailed to the kitchen, which was just a room away, and without another thought - she didn't have any time to spare, she felt - ran into it. She just hoped that the men were headed towards her bedroom, which was the most logical place for her to be, considering the time at night. She also hoped that they didn't notice the light on in the living room where she had just been. She gulped.

Where was logic? What was she supposed to do? She had never been in any sort of situation that was even anything _close_ to this. She just wished she had Kaito with her... he'd know what to do -

Idea! She rushed to the kitchen phone, white with a spiral cord that was much too long for anyone's good. She dialed Kaito's number - somehow she had completely forgotten about the police - and listened and listened as the Kuroba household landline rang. Finally a very sleepy sounding Kaito picked up. She was momentarily amazed, seeing as she had always assumed that he was a heavy sleeper. How did a simple phone call wake him up?

"Hello, this is Kuroba Kaito speaking, to what do I owe this -"

"Kaito?" her voice came out very small. She was trying to keep it quiet so that the men wouldn't hear her. "There's someone in my house."

A pause. His next sentence was said much more alert and awake. "Aoko, what are you calling me for? Get out!"

"Ah, calling the police?" Aw shit he was right behind her. She spun around and was face to face with the intruder. The first thing she noticed about him was his brown, dark brown mustache. And then his cold, unfeeling eyes. It took her a little bit to see the gun pointed at her forehead. "Hang up and I promise I'll make this quick and painless."

"Aoko? _Aoko! _Did you hear me? Get out of -"

Click. She hung up.

Clatter. There went the phone.

Crap. No way out.

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She woke up sometime later - it could have been hours, days, or even weeks for all that she knew - to the sound of a steady beeping. Her whole body felt sore. She peeked her eyes open, just a tiny sliver open, and tried to get a grasp on reality. It felt like, for however long she had been sleeping, she had been falling and falling with nothing to grab onto to keep her from plummeting. She blinked a couple times more before opening her eyes fully. She took everything in.

Everything was white. No, that was wrong. _Some_things were white. Others were not. Her father was slouched over in a chair to her right, presumably asleep. There was a window behind him, and it looked to be just as dark as it was in her last waking memory. Wait, wasn't there - that man? How did she get out? And how did she end up here?

Her eyes trailed around more, looking for more clues. The steady beeping kept going and she found its source soon enough. It was some big metal machine with a bunch of wires hooked up to it. And those wires were hooked up to her. It took only a second to put the rest of the pieces together.

This had been the absolute worst Valentine's Day ever. Period. And it wasn't even February 14th anymore, she thought lividly. She had half a mind to scream out, just to let off some steam. But she didn't, for numerous reasons: 1) That was childish; 2) She didn't want to wake her father; 3) She had this big plastic tube apparently shoved down her throat and just about the only sound she could even make was some gurgling gasp. What the hell.

She thought back to last year, when on Valentine's Day she had made chocolate for Kaito but she had left it at home by accident and then never really had the courage to give to him. Yup, that definitely paled when compared to this year. Seriously, what the hell did she do to deserve _this_? Her head hurt terribly and she tried to raise her hands up to massage her forehead, but she had forgotten that she was in a freaking hospital and obviously had a reason to be there. Simply moving her arms hurt.

And there was also the fact that, once she managed to get her arms out from under the sheets, she was able to see them all wrapped up in medical gauze and bandages. That made her feel... uncomfortable, to say the least. She shook her head to get her hair out of her face, and with all pain still existing, felt the stiff presence of another bandage rapped around her head. It seemed pretty thick, pretty wide, so she would have to say... it went around most of her head. She gulped as she considered the possibility that maybe she _did_ get shot in the head. But wouldn't that have killed her? Maybe she just got lucky...

She remembered _that word_ all of a sudden. Inamorata. That was back again, suddenly and strongly. That word. She had the sudden ache to find it out. She pondered what would have happened if she had actually gone and looked it up. She probably wouldn't have parked herself in front of the TV. Or fallen asleep there. And she probably would have been kidnapped or shot in her sleep or something. She made a sound that resembled a laugh as she realized that that word had probably saved her life. Now wouldn't that have been hilarious. But it was true, wasn't it...? That word... and if it _did_ save her life, then what did that mean about Kaito? He saved her life, then, too.

Thinking made her tired. She reached her hand out and put it on her father's hand, which was resting on the armrest. Just to let him know that she had woken up. Just to let him know that he could stop worrying. And then she drifted off again...

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"Aoko!" she heard her name. "Hey, Aoko!"

"Hmm," she wasn't really listening. She had woken up again two hours ago, this time during the day and this time with other people in the room. Currently she was conversing with Kaito, who had gone out of his way to come to the hospital as quickly as possible as soon as he found out that she had finally stopped sleeping. They were talking about some random topic - it could've been about topless bunnies and she wouldn't have known the difference - and she was finding it increasingly difficult to pay attention. Finally, it seemed that Kaito had gotten sick of not being the center of her attention. He snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Ahoko!"

"Yeah, yeah! Bakaito, what is it?" Whether or not he saved her life, he was still as annoying as ever sometimes.

She heard her father speaking with the doctor in the background. Vaguely she became aware of the doctor retreating from the room, and her father following suit shortly after with only a "I'm heading to the food court" as a farewell. Same as always, wasn't he. She forced her eyes to train themselves on Kaito. He was speaking now. "Ne, Aoko. I got a question for you."

"And what would that be?" She snapped the reply, more because she was tired than because she was feeling grouchy.

He bit his lip, an almost unnoticeable action. To anyone else, it would have been too subtle to pick up on. But she was Nakamori Aoko, and she had been his best friend for how many years. Of course she had picked up on several things he was prone to do, and also that he never did. And this definitely fit into the latter category. She nodded her head in attempt to tell him to "go ahead" and "spit it the hell out already!" Which he did. "Just wondering... did you ever look up that word?"

Oh. _That_ word. The word that she had been trying to forget about this whole time. Her eyebrows went down and she stared unamusedly at him. "As a matter of fact, no I didn't. And Kaito," she furrowed her eyebrows even more and glared at him threateningly, "I swear, if it's just a fancy word for stupid, I _will_ beat the -"

She didn't have time to finish her sentence as she suddenly found her lips to be incapacitated. She blinked a couple times, trying to test to see if what was happening was true. Yup. There was Kaito, much too close for comfort, smashing his mouth right onto hers. Or maybe that was a bad way to put it, seeing as she was _enjoying _it. He pulled off of her after a couple seconds. He stared sheepishly at her. "That's what it means."

She blinked. "Oh." And then she grinned wildly. "I think I have a new favorite word."

She reached up and pulled him down for another go.

And most definitely, this was the best Valentine's Day she had ever had.

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**AN: ...written for my valentine, myself. Awww. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!**


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